


Animal Instincts

by splkespiegel



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 10:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6851212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splkespiegel/pseuds/splkespiegel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dolcetto knew early on that there was something about Greed that he would not tell them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Animal Instincts

Dolcetto knew early on that there was something about Greed that he would not tell them. When he approached their holding cells in the dead of the night and offered them freedom, they had all accepted without question. Greed broke the locks of their cages with his bare hands and smuggled them off to Dublith, and that was that. They were indebted to him, and when they offered to pay him back, he only laughed.

“You can pay me back by sticking with me. You all are my men now. Where I go, you follow,” he’d said, flashing that sharp grin of his.

That was when Dolcetto felt it. Smelled it, really; something raw and desperate beneath his flesh. He could never find the right combination of words to describe what he smelled on Greed whenever he spoke of his desires. It was invasive and powerful, it pushed its way into everything around him and held it tight.

The smell vanished when Greed let his smile fall and waved them forward to keep walking with him. He had told them earlier that day that he’d gotten ahold of an old bar called the Devil’s Nest that they could set up base in. The floors creaked, the paint was peeling, and ancient posters were plastered over holes in the walls, but after living for months in tiny cages, the last thing they thought to do was complain.

By the next month they had the place fixed up as well as they could manage, and a few weeks after they were pulling customers into the front end of the bar. By day they focused on bringing in money. By night, though, they went out and followed Greed around the town, listening to him boast about how Dublith was only the beginning of a soon-to-be massive operation, with him at its head and his crew not far behind.

Dolcetto had grown used to the smell after a while, or at least, he had gotten better at blocking it out. He was forced to learn how to ignore certain smells to avoid overloading too often. Sometimes he’d wait until he could find words to put to a smell before he learned to ignore it. He’d found that with his perception of the world being much more intense than the average human’s, he had trouble piecing words together to describe what he felt.

His vision was easy to adapt to; if anything his color vision had gotten duller since the experiments. His senses of smell and hearing, though – those were different matters entirely. Even in the bottommost rooms of the Devil’s Nest he could hear humans on the street speaking to each other, the wheels of cars rumbling along far off roads, the scuffling of animals in alleys above him. Sometimes he even caught whiffs of the world above. He could never find words that seemed right to describe what he smelled, but he’d gotten close with a few.

Humans often had slightly different smells from each other. There was the same base scent in every human, but below that was something subtler, specific to each person. Some people smelled a bit like happiness – that smell was soft and pleasant. Others smelled like confusion. He didn’t like how confusion smelled. It was amorphous yet sharp, and it pierced his brain and jumbled his thoughts if it was too close.

Dolcetto would admit that he may have spent too much time trying to describe things that he knew to be indescribable by human standards, but the fact that he could never pin down what he smelled on Greed sometimes bothered him. It was the one scent that he really had to rack his brains to find the words for. He hesitated to use the word “greedy”, that was silly, but that was what it felt like. It spread quickly and settled on everything around him, and it didn’t let go until Greed had calmed down from one of his more manic airs.

He knew that Greed was a homunculus, so it felt like a given that he did not smell or act like a human, but Dolcetto had always been inquisitive. Perhaps that was just the dog in him making itself known, though. He liked to know the “why” of things, even if it meant overstepping his boundaries a little.

When he finally worked up the nerve to stop Greed in one of the back rooms and ask him why exactly he didn’t seem like a human, his boss laughed that signature laugh of his.

“I was made from something that isn’t even remotely human.” He said. “Can’t exactly put on appearances when I never figured out how.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Dolcetto replied.

“Then what _do_ you mean?” Greed asked. He leaned an elbow on the nearest wall. Clearly he wasn’t planning on walking off any time soon. “I’m not a chimera, I don’t feel a lot of the things you can.”

Dolcetto froze as he tried to think of a way to ask what he wanted to ask without seeming rude. He licked his lips, looked off to the side, and composed himself.

“Something about you doesn’t… it doesn’t smell right.” He finally forced out. “I can’t describe it. It’s too strong, it shorts out my brain when I try to process it.”

Greed’s face went blank, and Dolcetto had the sudden urge to run off with the tail he did not have between his legs. Greed could clam up tighter than anyone Dolcetto had ever known, and it usually meant that he was about to fall into one of his fouler moods.

“That might be the stone.” Greed said after a moment. Dolcetto nearly jumped at the sudden noise.

“The what?” He asked, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

Greed pushed himself off the wall and plopped down on the nearest box, motioning for Dolcetto to sit next to him. Willing his knees to keep supporting him, Dolcetto obliged. His boss felt much less intimidating when they were sitting than when he had to look up at him.

“The philosopher’s stone.” Greed clarified, tapping a finger on his chest. “Homunculi have a philosopher’s stone as their cores. I don’t know how it binds to a body. Never bothered to learn.”

Dolcetto knew nothing of philosopher’s stones. He had vague memories of the researchers at the labs speaking of them, but he had never understood a word of what they said beyond their name.

Greed shifted to lean back on his palms. “Our bodies are built like a human’s. We have the same elements, the same structure. That’s why I can use the ultimate shield.” He shielded his left hand to demonstrate and held it up to the light. “It’s all carbon.”

Greed paused, glancing over at Dolcetto. “But we aren’t so much our bodies as we are the stone. If you put my stone in something that could handle it, I could use that body too.”

“Why do you want to be immortal if you can switch bodies as easily as that?” Dolcetto asked. It was a genuine question. Greed often rambled about how he wanted everything in the world, and how he could only achieve that if he became immortal.

“I’m durable, not unkillable.” Greed said. “If my stone runs out of power, then that’s the end for me.”

They both went quiet at that. Dolcetto could not imagine a world without Greed. They’d only known each other for a few months, and already he felt like they and the rest of the crew had secured their own space in the world. They seemed untouchable in the Devil’s Nest.

“That’s why I need to find the secret to real immortality.” Greed piped up, interrupting Dolcetto’s thoughts. His wide grin came back to his face and his eyes brightened behind his shades. The smell returned again, but somehow Dolcetto found that he could handle it. “I can’t get everything I want on just regeneration and some stone.”

Greed stood and walked off in the general direction of his room. Dolcetto felt the smell leaving with him, but not before he had a burst of inspiration. That smell wasn’t greedy, like he had first thought. It felt more protective. Greed wanted everything in the world, but the way he had rescued a group of unpredictable chimeras for so little gain… it was almost as if he was looking for something to guard.

If that were the case, then Greed was being protective of them. Protective of his men. Dolcetto felt a smile work its way onto his face at the thought. His boss was much more sentimental than he would ever let on, wasn’t he?


End file.
